Epic Knights of Legend and Steel

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Kennington House

Oxford South

K ennington House had been built the previous century and had come into the de Lara clan through marriage. It had originally been a de Vere property those years ago and the de Veres had spared little expense for it; a very large and lavish hall was attached to a two-storied secondary building that contained four smaller chambers on the bottom floor and a massive, master’s chamber on the upper floor. The house itself was shaped like a “T”, with the window of the master’s chamber facing the church across the road because the pious de Veres liked it that way.

In the smaller chamber on the ground floor, Courtly sat on a simple, oak chair, working on a piece of embroidery that wasn’t her own. Her aunt, Lady Ellice, had given it to her when they had arrived at Kennington House earlier that day and had told her to finish it. The woman had given her and Isadora no greeting other than to hand them projects to complete, for her attention was fully on her younger brother, Kellen, and the distinct distaste they had for one another. A childless spinster, Ellice had no patience for children or even for people in general. She was a bitter, nasty shrew.

Therefore, while Ellice and Kellen went through the motions of a stiff greeting as Kellen explained the reason behind their arrival at Kennington, Courtly and Isadora disappeared into the house and into the small bedchamber they usually slept in during the times they had visited. Neither girl wanted to be around their father and aunt when the conversation turned nasty, which it usually did fairly quickly. It had, for as long as the girls could remember, an underlying hatred and bitterness from Ellice towards her brother, although that underlying hatred had never been explained. It was simply the way of things.

As Courtly sat on the chair, in a linen surcoat that smelled of smoke, working on the small piece of embroidery that was a hummingbird upon a flower, she could hear her father’s agitated voice and Ellice’s low, threatening one, both of them still out in the small courtyard. She sighed heavily as she listened. She didn’t understand how siblings could not get on with one another and it was like this every time they visited.

“Shall we stay here with Auntie now that our lodging has burned?” Isadora asked. She had a pair of Ellice’s stockings in her hand and had been commanded to sew a hole in the heel. “Court, I do not wish to stay here. I do not like staying with Auntie in the least.”

Courtly looked at her younger sister. At eleven years of age, Isadora was a frail, delicate thing. She was also quite smart and quite vocal, which could get her into trouble at times. With light brown hair and her sister’s big, blue eyes, she looked like a little, porcelain doll, and Courtly was the only mother she had ever known. Given that the girls’ mother had perished of a fever when Isadora had been two years of age, the task of raising the toddler had been given over to Courtly until she went to foster and she was, naturally, very protective of the girl, and especially protective from their shrewish aunt.

“Nor do I,” Courtly said patiently. “But until Papa can make other arrangements, we must stay where he tells us. For tonight, it will be here.”

Isadora didn’t want to sew the hole in her aunt’s smelly stocking. She threw it onto the bed.

“Why does Auntie make us do her terrible chores?” she demanded. “Her stockings stink of rot and I do not want to mend them.”

Courtly extended the half-finished bird embroidery. “Would you rather work on this?”

Isadora frowned, crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest. “Nay,” she said. Then, she threw herself onto the small, spartanly-covered bed. “I do not want to stay here at all!”

Courtly watched her sister verge on a tantrum. “You may as well accept that we will at least stay the night here,” she said. “Fussing over it will not change things. Besides, Sir Maximus and Sir Garran are to join us tonight for sup. We cannot leave before we properly thank them for saving us.”

Isadora rolled over onto her back, eyeing her sister. Her tantrum was forgotten as she thought on the powerful knights who had saved them from certain death. Her thoughts lingered particularly on the de Shera brother and the way her usually-reserved sister had interacted with him. Courtly was usually quite controlled and not willing to give members of the opposite sex her attention, but she had clearly broken that rule for Sir Maximus. It was an intriguing thought.

“You like Sir Maximus,” she said bluntly. Tact was not her strong suit. “I could tell. You smiled at him a lot.”

Courtly kept her head down, resuming her embroidery. “I must be polite to him,” she said evenly. “What would you have me do? Be rude to the man who saved us?”

“You fell on his head.”

Courtly couldn’t help it, then. Her cheeks flushed a deep red as she thought on the very embarrassing position she found herself in when she had plunged from the makeshift rope. She could not have planned that fall to be any worse than it had been. She had hit him at precisely the right angle to make her legs split and go along his shoulders, his head right in between them. She could still feel his hot breath against her tender core and it caused bolts of shock to race up her spine at the mere hint of the memory.

“It was an accident, I assure you,” she told her sister, not looking at her. “Believe me when I say that if I’d had another choice on the manner in which I landed on him, I more than likely would have taken it.”

Isadora could see that her sister was humiliated by the event but, instead of avoiding the subject, she grinned. It wasn’t often that she got a rise out of her serious sister.

“Your skirt was around his head,” she giggled. “You sat right on his head!”

Courtly rolled her eyes with some misery. “Aye, I did, you little goat,” she snapped softly. “I will hear no more about it, do you understand? If I do, I shall spank you soundly.”

Isadora continued to giggle, not at all fearful of Courtly’s threat. She rolled around on the bed, silly and snorting, kicking her legs up in the air.

“He is very handsome,” she said. “I like his beard. When he smiles, his eyes crinkle.”

Courtly was growing flustered as she continued with her embroidery. “No more talk of Sir Maximus,” she snapped but it was without force, although her mind was inevitably lingering on the very big knight with the well-trimmed beard. Indeed, he was quite handsome. “We will be seeing him tonight and that will be the end of it.”

Isadora stopped kicking her legs in the air and rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her hand. “Is that what you want?” she asked. “Never to see him again?”

Courtly eyed her sister. “Mayhap not,” she admitted. “I… I suppose I would like to see him again. But you know how Papa is. He does not like men around us. I have had six suitors and he has chased them all off.”

Isadora shrugged. “But he cannot chase Sir Maximus off,” she said. “He is bigger than Papa and more frightening. Mayhap he will be the one man Papa does not chase off.”

Courtly shook her head, looking back to her embroidery. “I would not stake my life on that,” she said, sounding defeated already. She would not have been opposed to Sir Maximus being the one man her father couldn’t chase off, but alas, she was sure it was not to be. She paused before stabbing into the material again, her expression wistful. “But I do wish… I wish that, just once, he would not chase off a suitor. I will never marry if he does that.”

Isadora sensed something in her sister, a longing she had never seen before. Courtly usually didn’t care about the men their father chased off, but perhaps Sir Maximus was different. He certainly seemed different.

“Mayhap if you speak to Papa,” she said helpfully. “Mayhap if you tell him you do not wish for him to chase away Sir Maximus, then he will not.”

Courtly shook her head, firmly. “He will not listen,” she said. “You know how he is. All men are evil and only have lust of the flesh on their mind. Therefore, I am afraid you and I will either be destined to be spinsters our entire lives or destined for the nunnery. That will be our only choices should Papa continue his ways, and I do not wish to end up at a nunnery.”

Isadora gazed at her sister, her young thoughts lingering on the bearded knight. “Would you be Lady de Shera, then?”

Courtly shrugged coyly. “Mayhap.”

Isadora was interrupted from replying when the chamber door jerked open and a rather large woman stood in the doorway. Lady Ellice de Lara, a fair-haired and somewhat masculine woman, eyed her nieces with something just short of hostility. But that was usual with her, an embittered woman with a nasty attitude, particularly towards her brother’s children. At the sight of the woman, Isadora sat bolt upright and grabbed the smelly hose she was supposed to be mending, grabbing for the needle and, in her haste, stabbing herself. The girl yelped and put the offended finger in her mouth as Ellice entered the room. Her gaze was mostly on Courtly.

“Well, well,” she said, her eyes lingering on Courtly’s fair head. “Busy at work, I see. Lady Courtly Love de Lara and her sister, Lady Isadora Adoration de Lara. Such grand names for rather small and insignificant ladies.”

Courtly forced a smile at her aunt. “It is nice to see you again, Auntie,” she said politely, not reacting to the insult dealt. “Did Papa tell you what happened in town? Issie and I were nearly killed in a fire. We lost all of our possessions.”

Ellice looked her niece over, critically. “You seem well enough to me,” she said. “And before you go begging for more clothing or other foolish trinkets, know that I have nothing for you. You will make do with what you have.”

“We have nothing.”

Ellice eyed her niece, snorting rudely after a moment, before turning her gaze to Isadora. “And you?” she said, eyeing the child. “You had better mend that stocking before nightfall or there will be consequences.”

Isadora cowered as Courtly spoke up. “Auntie, she will have it done,” she said, rather firmly. “You need not threaten her.”

Ellice looked at Courtly, her eyes narrowing. “You accuse me of threatening her?”

“You just did.”

Ellice didn’t like being questioned in the least. She lived at Kennington and ruled it with an iron fist, verbally abusing cringing servants. Her eldest niece was questioning that omnipotent power and that did not set well with her.

“Your mother,” she finally snorted. “You look and act just like her. She did not know when to control her mouth, either.”

Courtly didn’t want to back down from the woman but she had no desire to fight with her, either. There was something very petulant and wicked about Ellice at times, something Courtly didn’t want to tangle with. It would only come to no good end, mostly hers. Therefore, she lowered her gaze and turned back to her sewing.

“Thank you for providing us with shelter tonight, Auntie,” she said politely. “If we could have some soap sent to us so that we may wash the smoke smell away, we would be grateful.”

“I have no soap for you.”

Courtly didn’t acknowledge the nasty retort. “Then we will see you this evening at sup. Good day, Auntie.”

She was essentially dismissing her aunt but doing in the nicest possible way. It was gaining the upper hand without obviously gaining it. Everyone in the room knew she was sending the woman on her way. Ellice frowned at her niece. She rather liked verbally sparring, even if she didn’t like insolence, and was somewhat disappointed that Courtly had backed down. It frustrated her.

“Courtly Love,” she scoffed as she turned away. “It is a foolish name. I told my brother it was a foolish name when you were born but your mother insisted. She said it was the embodiment of what a true lady should be; chaste and virtuous. What a foolish, foolish woman your mother was.”

She was muttering as she turned for the door, heading out of the room without even shutting the ornately carved door panel of darkly stained oak. As the woman wandered down the corridor, Isadora leapt up from the bed and slammed the door, throwing the bolt.

“I do not want to stay here tonight!” she declared again. “Auntie is an evil witch!”

In spite of her tense expression, Courtly broke down into giggles. “Mayhap we shall not have to,” she said. “Mayhap Papa is, even now, scouring the outskirts of Kennington for a place to stay. I am sure he does not wish to remain here as much as we don’t.”

Isadora remained by the door, listening to the corridor outside. She hissed. “I can still hear her,” she said, frowning. “She is telling the servants not to bring us any soap!”

Courtly sighed heavily, shaking her head. “I shall speak with Papa,” she said. “Not to worry. We shall have what we need. In fact, we should make a list of all we lost. Will you do that, Issie? Make a list?”

She proposed the list to distract her sister and the ruse worked. Isadora was flighty, and a bit dramatic, but she was also very intelligent. She nodded eagerly and came away from the door.

“I shall think of everything we had,” she said. Then, her expression saddened. “I lost my pink, silk dress.”

“And I lost my red brocade.”

Isadora nodded, ticking off the contents of her bag in her head. She had been schooled by the monks at St. Mary’s Church in the village of Trelystan when she had been younger, mostly because she had demanded of Kellen that she learn to read and write. With Courtly away fostering at the time, Kellen had been unable to deny his lonely, youngest daughter and took her to the monks at the church, whereupon they undertook the task of teaching the seven-year-old to write with the lure of much coinage donated by Kellen.

Four days a week, Kellen would take his daughter to the church and the monks would teach her how to read and write. Isadora, extremely bright, learned quickly and stopped going to the church after a year. At that point, Kellen should have sent her away to foster with her sister but found he simply couldn’t bear to do it. His daughters reminded him of his wife, and he missed her greatly, so shortly after Isadora stopped going to the church, Kellen recalled Courtly from Prudhoe Castle. The older sister returned, reunited with her younger sibling, and Kellen proceeded to continue the girls’ education himself.

The results were that the girls learned mathematics, military tactics, some literature, and military history. Kellen imparted upon them what he knew, that being mostly things that only knights would know from their schooling and fostering. Therefore, the girls were quite educated as a page or squire would be, and Courtly conveyed what she had learned at Prudhoe, so Isadora wasn’t too one-sided. She could sew and sing, and knew how to run a household. But she liked mathematics and writing much better.

“I need parchment and quill!” Isadora announced as she hunted around the ill-furnished room. “What shall I use to write?”

Courtly glanced around. “I am not sure there would be anything here,” she said. “Make a list in your mind and then we shall write it down later. For now, think on everything we had. That is a good start.”

Isadora was already busy with her mental list. She began rattling off the contents of her satchel, counting the lost pieces on her fingers, and then prompting Courtly to do the same. As Courtly stitched the hummingbird and listed off the possessions she had lost, Isadora committed what she could to memory.

When she began speaking of her pink, silk dress and how she was determined to have another one made, Courtly’s thoughts drifted to the red brocade she had lost and how she would not be able to wear it at the feast that night. All she would be able to wear for Sir Maximus was the smoke-stenched, dark green wool that she currently wore. It was all she had in the world.

So much for making an elegant impression on a man she realized that she wanted very much to impress.